Unfortunate Son
by Xahn777
Summary: You'd think Cloud would be used to this by now. But when Aerith brings warning of an entire hidden continent, with more Jenovah tainted life stream poised to resurrect Sephiroth, it sends Cloud and the rest of the gang barreling into a(nother) quest to save the planet as well as unearthing dark past no one knew Cloud had. Their only clue? The (in)famous author Jiraiya of Myoboku.
1. Chapter 1

Cloud was having a bad day, which was quite an accomplishment considering he wasn't even awake yet. It seemed that whenever he managed to dig himself out of the dark broody pit that was his past the Planet just had to hit him with something to send him tumbling all the way back down. "What do you mean adopted?"

Aerith giggled "You said that three times in a row."

Zack sighed, "Since you're still stuck on that, and not the, like three, other earth shattering revelations, Spikey, I assume you didn't actually hear anything but 'Guess what I found out, Cloud! You were adopted!'" Zack said in a passable imitation of Aerith. "Which I admit," He continued in his normal voice, "isn't the best way to start a conversation about saving the Planet again, but at least she didn't say..."

"Zack, if the next words out of your mouth," Cloud interrupted, "Are any variation of 'You're not who you think you are' I'm going to punch you in the nose and then pinch myself until I wake up."

"Ah man, you're no fun sometimes Cloudy..." Zack pouted.

Cloud pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to stave off the impending headache, "What was that about saving the planet... again?" Cloud sighed, "You'd think that after Omega Weapon the Planet wouldn't have anything left to throw at us... And what does being adopted have to do with saving the world anyway?"

"Well... Two thousand years ago, Yggdrasil the World Tree was corrupted by Jenova, turning it into a horrible monster with ten tails."

"A tree with ten tails?" Cloud interrupted, "That's the most ridiculous thing I've heard in years..."

"Please Cloud, this is important. The monster was so powerful that the strongest Cetra alive at the time couldn't destroy it. Instead he sealed the beast inside of himself and then used its own power to seal the majority of the continent it was on away, along with the thousands of Cetra that lived there, to prevent Jenova's Taint from spreading to the rest of the world, through Yggdrasil's severed roots."

"Wait this guy sealed a continent away? How does that even work?"

"I don't know the exact mechanics of his spells, but I do know that there were at least four separate barriers surrounding it, one to keep people out, one to keep people in, and one to hide it in time and space. The last one separated the already tainted Lifestream of the Hidden continent from poisoning the rest of the Lifestream."

"So, what's the problem, this guy sealed it all away right?"

"There's the problem Chocobo-head, that last barrier ain't holding up so well anymore. I don't think anyone's been doing maintenance on it for 1,500 years. The thing's leaking like a sieve."

"Zack's right, corrupted Mako is spilling into the Lifestream off of the coast of Wutai. Cloud... it's bad... really bad. Sephiroth could easily be reborn three times over from the amount of corruption present in the fourth continent's Lifestream."

Cloud began to massage his temples. "Alright I can see the problem, But I still don't see what this has to do with me being adopted."

"Well... you... kind of... were born there?"

"Why didn't I see that coming..." Cloud moaned with his face in his hands. "What does that make me? Some kind of Jenova monster?"

"Don't be silly Cloud, you're as human as I am." Aerith reassured him.

"Technically, Aerith, you're twice as human as he his..." Zack said with teasing smile.

"You're not helping, Zack." Aerith sighed as Cloud paled.

"What. The. Fuck. Zack." Cloud growled through grit teeth. "What the absolute fuck does that mean?"

"Well, you know how Aerith is half human, half Cetra right?" Zack asked with an easy-going smile, when Cloud gave a hesitant nod he continued, "As far as we can tell you're one quarter human and three quarters Cetra."

"H-h-how?"

"Well when a half Cetra daddy loves a Cetra mommy..." Zack began, before Aerith cut him off.

"Your father was probably my mother's half-brother." She said slowly, to give Cloud time to ask the question she knew he was going to.

"We're cousins?" Cloud asked, "Wait, you said our parents were half siblings... how did that happen?"

"When Shin-Ra began hunting for the last of the Cetra he tried to take his family to the Hidden continent, believing it to be the Cetra promised land from myth." Aerith answered. "He managed to get his son, through the barrier, but Shin-Ra attacked before he could open the barrier again for his wife." She smiled sadly, "They were separated in the attack. She believed he was dead and by the time he found her she had remarried, and had your aunt, the woman who raised you. Eventually he met my grandmother and had my mother."

"What about my parents, what happened to them? How did I end up here if I was born on this hidden continent?"

"I don't have the full story but I do have a name. Go to Wutai, and look for a man named Jiraiya of Myoboku."

"Hey Cloud," Zack said, uncharacteristically serious, as the blinding white of the dream world started to fade, "Before you go there's something for you where I died. Make sure you keep it with you all the time for me, okay?"

XxXxX

Cloud woke with a gasp to dim light streaming through the bedroom window's curtains, and Tifa's head buried in his shoulder.

"Something wrong Cloud?" Tifa murmured. Apparently his abrupt waking had disturbed her sleep.

"Nothing that can't wait." He replied pulling Tifa a little closer. "Go back to sleep. We can deal with the Ghost Brigade when its actually morning."

xXxXx

"I won't let you kill anyone else!" Uchiha Sasuke, twenty-five year old Rokudaime Hokage of Konohagakure no Sato, stood between his fallen teammates and the Snake Sannin Orochimaru, while around him Konoha burned. Forcing himself to ignore his wounded side, Sasuke took a defensive stance, his katana held sideways between himself and Orochimaru.

"Ku ku ku, little Sasuke-kun thinks he can stop me? I've razed Konoha before and this time I won't leave anyone alive to rebuild this thrice damned place." Orochimaru punctuated his statement by licking Sai's blood off of his sword, the Kusanagi no Tsurugi.

Sasuke resisted the urge to turn around and check on his teammates. The last time he let his attention wander during the fight, when Orochimaru had hit him with a ridiculous 'the sky is falling' genjutsu and he was momentarily stunned by the absurdity of such a thing, he was nearly bisected by Orochimaru's damnable sword.

Not that he needed to look anyway, Sai's ragged breathing had already stopped, and Hinata's breath came in short shuddering gasps, she would be lucky to bleed out before the Kusanagi's poison killed her.

"Aren't you going to say something, Sasuke-kun?" Orochimaru hissed, "No vows of vengeance for the theft of your brother's eyes? Or the death of that old goat, Sarutobi?" Orochimaru's coal black eyes, so different from the slitted gold Sasuke remembered from their last battle, turned blood red with three black tomoe lazily circling a contracted pupil, mirroring Sasuke's own. "Or... how about the loss of your wife, hmm?"

Ignoring the thrumming in his ears, Sasuke ground out, "There is nothing I want to say to you, you old monster." Sasuke's eyes morphed into a crimson six pointed star, "Except goodbye! Susa..."

Orochimaru slashed through Sasuke's partially completed Susano'o and into his uninjured side before he could finish his technique. "Ah, ah ah!" Orochimaru wagged a finger in Sasuke's face, "Show me your original Jutsu first. How can I collect all the Jutsu in the world if I send you to your grave before I steal them?" Orochimaru pointed the tip of Kusanagi under Sasuke's chin, "Use them."

The thrumming in Sasuke's ears increased in pitch and volume until he felt he would get lost in the noise, "Never."

Orochimaru's theatrical sigh was almost entirely lost in the rising wind."Ah well... I was so looking forward to killing you with your own jutsu..." By the end of his sentence Orochimaru was all but shouting to be heard over the strange noise and suddenly strong wind.

Sasuke barely had time to realize that Orochimaru could hear the strange thrumming noise too, before he sensed something hurtling down at them.

Sasuke and Orochimaru leapt away from each other as a dark shape crashed into the spot they had been standing moments before.

"Who dares interfere?" The Snake Sannin hissed at the man who had landed between them.

Sasuke stared at the stranger in shock, as he rose from the shallow crater his landing created. How could Orochimaru not recognize the man in front of them? Sure the man's clothing was incredibly strange, consisting of loose, baggy pants over leather boots, under what looked like half a skirt, or maybe an apron, on his left side. A partially unzipped, sleeveless high collared sweater covered his chest, with single pauldron over the left shoulder that had a loose sleeve made out of the same material as his half skirt hanging from it. All of it was black, in fact the only color to be found in the stranger's ensemble was the silver wolf's head on the pauldron and the four silver buckles on the multiple belts holding it all together.

But all that was inconsequential to the man's most striking features, messy bright blond hair spiked up in a dozen different directions and eyes as blue as the sky. Any Konoha-nin could tell you what that meant.

"Yondaime-sama?"


	2. Chapter 2

"You two be good for Reno and Rude while we're away, you hear me?" Tifa said, giving Denzel and Marlene one last bone crushing hug. "Hopefully we won't be gone for too long trying to find this Jiraiya person."

"I swear the ink was an accident Tifa!" Denzel grumbled.

"Besides, Reno looked nice with black hair!" Marlene piped in.

"I don't know about Tifa, but I don't want to listen to him cry for hours on end again." Cloud interrupted, "So you two will be good while we're gone. Or I'll have to ground you until you're eighteen, got it?"

"Sir! Yes, Sir!" Marlene and Denzel snapped off synchronous, textbook perfect, and incredibly sarcastic, salutes.

"Look at us Rude..." Reno whimpered, "Reduced to babysitters for devil children."

"I like the kids, Reno. Stop complaining."

"Be good!" Cloud reminded the kids as he slotted his Fusion Sword into its compartment at the front of his motorcycle Fenrir.

"And stay safe!" Tifa called out from her place on the back of Cloud's motorcycle, before he sped off. "Hey Cloud the airship dock is in the other direction. I thought we were heading straight to the Shera."

"Apparently there's something where Zack died." Cloud shouted over the rush of the wind. "I promised him I'd bring it with me! It shouldn't take too long to grab it and meet the others on the Shera."

Less than half an hour later Cloud pulled to a stop next to the slowly spreading patch of small yellow flowers that marked the spot Zack died and passed on his dreams, and his sword to Cloud, starting him on his path to being a hero.

"So what are you looking for?" Tifa leaned over Cloud's shoulder while he knelt in the dirt.

"I'm not too sure...Ah! Here it is." Cloud brushed aside some dirt revealing a small, misshapen, faintly glowing, red marble. "A summon materia." Cloud picked the red materia up revealing a second blue materia underneath the original red one, "and a support materia as well."

"I wonder what they do." Tifa said while Cloud slotted them into his spare linked slots in his custom made Materia bracer. The small red summon barely fit in the standard materia slot.

"_BOO!"_ An ethereal voice shouted in Cloud's ear.

Cloud jump almost a dozen feet in the air while doing a back-flip at the apex of his jump. He landed in a crouch ten feet away and reached for his sword, before realizing that his sword was still in Fenrir, and recognizing the voice. "GAIA DAMN IT ZACK!"

"_AHAHAHAHAHA, You shoulda seen your face Spike!"_ Zack's voice echoed in his ear.

"You...can... hear Zack outside of the white place now?" Tifa asked hesitantly.

"_Me too!"_ Aerith piped in, "_Our Summon is called 'The Lovers' Isn't it great!"_

"...And... and Aerith as well." Cloud managed to choke out.

"_Yep! It's all thanks to that new Support Materia! It's called Listen!"_

"C-can you Summon them as well?"

"_Not yet,"_ This time it was Zack, "_This was the best we could do on short notice, the summon needs more power to be able to pull us out of the Lifestream..."_ Zack momentarily trailed off. "_Huh... That's... That's really weird..."_

"What's weird Zack?"

"Other than you talking to people no one else can hear?" Tifa teased.

"_Eh... It doesn't matter yet. Don't worry about it. Just a weird interaction with the Listen materia."_

"Whatever you say Zack." Cloud shook his head, "Hey Tifa there anything you want to say to them, now that you can?"

"Yeah... but can I do it in our cabin on the Shera?" Tifa rubbed her arms, "I'd rather have that conversation in private."

"Sure, Let's go then." Cloud helped Tifa onto the back of the bike before hopping on himself and speeding away.

xXxXx

Sasuke blinked in shock and squinted his damaged eyes, and the features of the Fourth Hokage melted off the stranger. While some similarities remained namely the strangers general coloring, his jawline and his nose, Sasuke realized that the stranger barely appeared to be a day over 18 and was positively tiny. The Fourth would have had at least 7 centimeters on the stranger and Sasuke had about 4 on the Yondaime.

The stranger glanced at Orochimaru before turning to investigate him, eyes sliding over his wounded state defense posture and injured, 'Injured not dead damn it,' teammates. The blond stranger raised his left hand and pointed at Sasuke's dying teammates behind him and said a single word in a language he didn't understand.

"_Phoenix"_ a single thread of fire lashed out of his finger tip and struck Sasuke's teammates, creating a massive pillar of flame where they lay.

"You Bastard!" the words were barely out of his mouth when the tower of flame coalesced into a giant bird and slammed into Orochimaru, sending him flying a more than a dozen meters away. The only thing that stopped him from gutting the stranger was coughing from behind him, two people coughing. Hinata and Sai.

The strangers left hand was still pointing in their general direction. He spoke again, "_Curaga"_ this time a warm green energy flowed out of his hand and blanketed Sasuke and his teammates. Hinata's shallow pained breaths became deep and healthy and Sai's skin went from corpse gray to it's natural unhealthy white, and Sasuke's injuries closed instantly. "_Esuna"_ another word, another green flash this time the poison in their bodies disappeared, and Sasuke went from half blind to his naturally perfect vision for the first time in nearly a decade.

"I." Orochimaru enunciated carefully as his charred body began to rapidly heal. "Will." he growled as his fleshed blurred into hundreds of white snakes before returning to his body to a pristine unblemished state. "Kill." Orochimaru reached out and his sword flew across the battlefield and into his hand. "Yo—gurk."

Orochimaru's last word was interrupted by a shining spear falling from the sky. Sasuke managed to get a glimpse of three golden blades before the weapon pinned Orochimaru to the ground. Moments later an older man in a blue tee shirt with a sweater tied around his waist landed on the butt of the spear driving in further into both Orochimaru and the ground.

"_Tifa's spitting mad at you for jumping off the ship Cloud."_ The new man said around a still lit cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. Apparently he spoke the same language as the Yondaime look alike. As Orochimaru began to twitch the new blond did a flip off the end of the spear, pulling it out of Orochimaru in a spray of blood, and landing two dozen meters away next to the original stranger.

"Yahoo! Make way for the Great Ninja Kisaragi Yuffie!" Despite her strange accent Sasuke could understand her clearly 'At least she speaks a real language. 'But What kind of ninja announces their entrance?' Sasuke thought aggravatedly

A red and gold blur took Orochimaru's knees out from underneath him following the blurred weapon back up to a girl with a blank Hitai-Ate a strange beige arm guard and the weirdest Fuuma Shuriken he had ever seen. As his eyes traveled past her he had to do a triple take to make sure his newly healed eyes weren't seeing things.

Floating in the sky barely a hundred meters above Konoha was a frankly bizarre metal ship. Both the thrumming noise and the powerful wind seemed to originate from its pair of multi-bladed masts. There was an open door on the side of it with at least another four people inside. As he watched one cloaked in red _twisted_ and reappeared less than a meter away from Sasuke.

With his long black hair, pale skin, and glowing red eyes the newest stranger could have passed as an Uchiha. Hair and ragged red cape blowing just out of sync with the unnatural wind, the not-Uchiha pulled the strangest weapon Sasuke had seen yet out of a sheath strapped to his thigh, it was vaguely L-shaped with a guard around one finger and three holes at the far end. With the casual grace of a weapon-master, and the speed of a striking snake, the red-cloaked stranger pointed his weapon at Orochimaru and pulled a small lever hidden behind the finger guard three times. Each pull resulted in two explosions, one inside the weapon, and one directly where the weapon was pointed. The first explosion punched a whole in the center of Orochimaru's torso that was big enough for Sasuke to put fist through without touching the sides. The second blew Orochimaru's right arm off at the shoulder, and the third vaporized Orochimaru's head.

There was half a second of silence before Orochimaru's bloodied wounds momentarily burst into snakes. When the snakes receded Orochimaru was completely unharmed. Even his clothes had regenerated with him.

"Damn Vin-Chan," The self proclaimed ninja, Yuffie, said to the red cloaked stranger, "We haven't seen healing like that since Hojo..."

"_Get outta the way foo'!"_ Sasuke looked up, sliding down a rope attached to the flying boat was one of the largest men he had ever seen. Scarcely two centimeters shorter than the Fourth Raikage and just as wide, the dark skinned man had a flaming skull tattooed on one shoulder and the other arm was replaced by a metal puppet arm, that rapidly unfolded into what Sasuke could only assume was the same type of weapon as the red cloaked stranger, Vin, Sasuke thought the weird ninja Yuffie had called him, used.

The resulting hail of metal from the large man's weapon fired actually pushed Orochimaru back three steps before he began to regenerate.

While the large dark skinned man fired, a long haired woman with dark shorts a leather vest and a waist cape descended, along with what appeared to be a house-cat wearing a crown and cape on the back of a large red panther-like creature with a flaming tail.

"What." Sasuke croaked, "What is that?"

"Eh? You speak Wutaian?" Yuffie asked. "Don't worry about Ol' Snakey over there. We'll kick his ass in, like, ten minutes flat."

"_Less."_ the long haired woman said pulling on blue and gold gauntlets with a strange almost crystalline shield covering her fists.

"_Yeh got that right lassie." _The cat said. At this point Sasuke's sense of rational disbelief decided to call it quits. "_Just our luck, haven't been here for more than five minutes, An' we've already found their Hojo."_

"Let's Mosey." Despite his strange choice of words, The Yondaime look-a-like had a perfectly clear accent, unlike Yuffie.

(Seriously, though, who says 'let's mosey' before going into a fight with the Last Sannin anyway?)


End file.
